dimanche 3 juillet 2005

Maya connexion in a mini-van...

Sometimes, things aren't going as planned.
As I wrote here yesterday about the McDonald's effect, we had to spend an extra night in Semuc Champey to really have a chance to enjoy the site.
The next morning, on our way back in Coban, we needed to take a transport from Semuc to Lanquin, where we wanted to visit the caves of Lanquin, then take another transport from Lanquin to Coban.
After we've waited for two hours and a half, we finally took a little camionetta and rode standing on the back platform for about half an hour, getting banana tree leaves in the face once in a while :)
And after our visit to the Lanquin Caves, we waited another hour or so before catching a mini-van heading to Coban. Here, transports are never full, they never say no, sorry, we're full, wait for the next one, since they want you to pay them, not the next one, because everyone is independant and make his own money. So, even if the mini was already packed, they welcomed us in for a two hours ride to Coban.
This type of minivan is built to carry about 12 people. With a coupl extra seats design locally and fixed to the mini, lets say it's easy to ride with 16 passenger and a driver.
On the mini from Lanquin to Coban, we were 26 people all together packed in. Twenty six. Suzie, me and 24 mayas, not speaking spanish, but a language called Quechi'.
I beleive that if one day, i'm doing a trip with less space, I'd better ride in the glove compartment! :)
Anyway, actually, it was quite and experience in itself. First, the ride on the platform, and then, the mini, so packed that for the first 20 minutes or so, I was riding halfway out by the window, so i had more "room" and more air as well. but unfortunately for me, it started to rain and I had to get myself all inside for the rest of the trip.
Since it was raining, a tiny layer of fog quickly appears on the windows. A few maya girls were putting their fingers on it to make some drawings. At a stop, I decided to draw a little cat face, with moustaches and pointed ears and they really liked it! After, they spent more than half an hour trying to reproduce it, but without great success! In a way, we kinda connected during the trip, without having to talk...
Outside of the mini, the landscape was going by, I felt it was like a little timeless moment in my trip, listening to the little maya girls laughing at their try to draw a cat face on the window, looking at banana trees, I was nowhere near anything I really knew before and so, after all, that ride ended up worthing every penny I was spending being there.

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